Whistling in the dark?_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

Whistling in the dark?

3. It didn’t take long for Mitt Romney’s Republican running-mate, Paul Ryan, to make the kind of impact on us foreigners which will delight his admirers and confirm the bookies’ hunch that Barack Obama may well win his second term in November despite an ailing US economy. Just two days on the job and some bright spark has just unearthed Ryan’s attack on the NHS.

It confirms the impression I got from reading the Fleet St Tory press on Sunday after Romney’s introduction of him as “the next president of the United States” (whoops). “Who says Romney is always risk-averse, eh?” and, “this will set the contest alight”. It sounded like whistling in the dark to keep conservative spirits up, knowing that the choice may well prove a Palin-esque mistake.

We can shrug and say that Congressman Ryan doesn’t know much about the NHS, either its strengths or weaknesses, so we needn’t waste much time on his views. That’s true as far as it goes. Very bright (so we keep being told) and charismatic (Mitt needs help in that department), Ryan is an ideologue who would look at a taxpayer-funded healthcare system and condemn it out of hand.

That’s what he did in the Wall St Journal (proprietor: R Murdoch) in 2009 when he warned that the Obama health plan would put the US on “a glide path towards European-style socialism” in which voters would become dependent on government, reluctant to embrace spending cuts which might hit their healthcare.